Productive Excess: Aesthetic Ideas, Silence, and Community

Due to the complexity of aesthetic ideas and the lack of a determinate concept that is adequate to our experience, we search for the words to describe our encounters with art. Sometimes, that search is in vain, and we are silenced by art. In “The Intentionality of Judgments of Taste in Kant’s Critique of Judgment” (JAAC 2008), Joseph Cannon claims that what happens in judgments of taste is “discursively mute.” I will show, by contrast, how the excess of aesthetic experience has the potential to foster sociability, communication, and, ultimately, community. Utilizing Kant, I show that Cannon’s focus on what we can express about judgments of taste vis-à-vis general cognition causes him to neglect the intersubjective and cultural dimensions of taste already present in the Critique of Judgment. I examine the way in which silence as a response to art plays a productive role in the communication of our selves and our humanity and how, in turn, this relates to community formation. I highlight and expand upon the social dimension of taste already present in Kant’s account. In particular, I explore Kant’s claim that humans need training in sociability and explain the implications of intersubjective aesthetic response for aesthetic education.